Does the Doodlekit free website service offer enough power for business users?

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Doodlekit is another online-only site builder, but it does things differently to Yola.

With Yola, when we began creating our website we were asked to fill in most of the details first. Our basic website was then built with the information we had provided.

Doodlekit takes a minimum of information, including the website name and what type of site it will be (personal or professional), and then creates a website with placeholder text and images. The text explains how each area of the website works, and how you can edit it. It's a similar method to that used by Xara Web Designer 7 Premium, and it works well.

Editing the web page is as simple as hovering the mouse over the relevant section and clicking 'Edit'. When we clicked on a section, a new window opened. This let us edit the page in a WYSIWYG interface, or via HTML. The ability to add your own code is great for giving you extra control over your website, and allowed us to add some more advanced features.

While adding photo albums, pictures and tables is pretty simple, Doodlekit lacks the drag-and-drop simplicity of some of the other tools here when it comes to adding more advanced website features. Instead you click a button to add the HTML, which you need to find yourself. It's not that complicated – especially if you have experience of using HTML – but it meant that it took us slightly longer to create a fully functioning website than some other packages.

Adding PayPal or Google Checkout to your website is also relatively straightforward, though you can't embed the store or your products into an existing web page. The option to create a store isn't immediately obvious – and isn't available to owners of free accounts – so a little digging is required.

You can add the HTML for shopping carts manually if you have a free account. Doodlekit claims that no HTML knowledge is needed, which is true to an extent. You can make a simple website without trouble, but to make the most of the features and to create a more versatile site, you need to know a bit of code.